The White House spent most of this week trying to tamp down the backlash against its recent decision to require almost all employers — including Catholic hospitals and universities — to fully cover contraception for their employees.

But Komen’s decision to cut off breast-screening grants to Planned Parenthood rapidly became a much bigger story than the firestorm of protest, led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, against the contraception coverage mandate.

It deflected at least some of the attention away from the contraception controversy, and allowed reproductive rights groups — the administration’s allies on the contraception rule — to remind Washington that the anti-abortion forces aren’t the only ones that matter in politics.

Reproductive rights advocates say the grassroots uproar that forced the organization to reverse its decision on Friday shows that Americans side with the administration, not the Catholic church.

“I think that recent uproar about the Komen foundation demonstrates what everybody should know is a fact ... There’s huge support for the availability of contraception and birth control throughout America,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice.

And it helped push back on the bishops in a way that is difficult for Catholics to do from within the church, he added, because many work at Catholic institutions where they fear losing their jobs if they speak out.

“The campaign [against contraception that] the bishops run, it’s like the ultimate ‘don’t ask don’t tell.’ People use contraception, will vote that way, but it's hard for them to stand up and say so,” O'Brien said.

But Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway — who is an adviser to Newt Gingrich and anti-abortion groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List and Americans United for Life — say these groups are putting an opportunistic spin on the week’s events. Planned Parenthood and its allies, she said, “always overplay their hand.”

Conway argues that the group wants to “hide behind pap smears and mammograms” to keep political support. That support would evaporate, she suggested, if they were to “say, ‘We’re America’s largest abortion provider ... [abortion] is our gravy train,’ and just be proud of it.”

But reproductive rights advocates were also hopeful that the show of grassroots muscle that forced Komen to reverse itself will help them in the upcoming election.

Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who counts Planned Parenthood among his clients, said abortion opponents are usually much more motivated voters than those who support abortion rights because the supporters “didn’t see a real or credible threat on the issue.”

But when something happens to make it a top-tier issue, he said, “the playing field gets more than level and very often the pro-choice side has the higher ground.”

And that’s exactly what the attacks on Planned Parenthood have done, Garin argues.

NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Nancy Keenan said this is a message her group will drive home in the campaign season.

Her group's job, she is, is to draw the contrast between Obama and "elected officials who want to put women’s health back [in] the dark ages.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 3:00 p.m. on February 3, 2012.